


3 in the Morning (Obsidian Heart Mix)

by Starcrossedsky



Series: Obsidian Heart Mix [7]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: M/M, Other, SB spoilers, casual desecration of your own grave, the awkward reality of sharing a body with someone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 22:42:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11724108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starcrossedsky/pseuds/Starcrossedsky
Summary: Last night I dreamt of you - you were beautiful, amidst a sky of blueFine, just the once.(Or: Someone gives Fray the chance to say goodbye.)





	3 in the Morning (Obsidian Heart Mix)

**Author's Note:**

> Contains pre-smut but not actual smut.

At first, it almost doesn't feel different. Same mattress on the floor, same faintly snoring Xaela, same ambient smell of tea over old blood.

It's home, and home not filtered by someone else's impressions of it, not fed through a mind that is only barely yours. For long moments, you only breathe, revelling in it.

It's perfectly justified. The last time you had autonomy, true autonomy rather than a few moments of being projected emotion and aether with your hands on Sid's sword, you were kind of a walking corpse.

This body isn't yours, of course - it's just a loan, from someone who refuses to let go of you. Someone who lets you have all their anger and resentment, to keep you buoyed above nothing, above the endless sleep in the abyss. Someone who has made _you_ a part of _them_.

You wonder, in the darkness, curled against Sid and silently stretching fingers that are both utterly foreign and familiar, if such a thing can be called love. Surely it must be, to have this much power.

Sid doesn't stir when you stand, putting the familiar-unfamiliar body of the Warrior of Light through its paces. You slip on black armor on autopilot, slide the helm down over your face, and slip out like a shadow.

\----

Only the dead would bother visiting the dead. Three unmarked graves - a child, an old man, and you.

"You would have made a bloody awful knight," you say to the first. "Even the staff-wielding variety. Somehow, you were - "

The abyss touches you, and your throat seizes for a moment. You can't finish the sentence, _always too good for them_. Maybe she wasn't. Maybe it's only the filter of childhood memories that make it so.

Imagine, rose-colored memories of the Brume. Nobody ever mentions how dying makes you more bloody maudlin than an entire case of the Knight's finest.

"You were right about him," you say instead. "He was just a kid like anyone else. Grew into a right chocobo's arse, but so did I. Wish you could've been an arse right there with us."

What else is there to say? The child you were back then was dead long before your body stopped moving. Next.

"...Thank you," you say finally, to your master's grave. Surely honesty is the best policy, now, even to people who can't hear. "For the abyss, the flame - for everything. I never had a father, but I think you did a better job anyway."

Sid said most of the rest, anyway, to a memory made solid. And it's not like you can be angry at him for leaving you, when you're just as guilty.

So, on to the third. This one, amazingly enough, actually has something of a marker. To think you'd be buried by knights in the end, after all that.

You stand there for a moment, considering, then shrug to an invisible audience. "What the hell," you say. "Not like anyone else ever gets the chance to do this. You were kind of a smug bastard anyway."

You take a nice, long piss on your own grave. It is deeply satisfying.

\----

The knight on shift barely blinks at you as you walk back through Foundation's gates. It's not far from here, just around the corner and over a short wall, on one of the wooden stairways that still litter the half-repaired Brume.

Back to where it all began. Once in a while, Sid has a pretty good idea.

"I'm still not going to say thanks," you say to the air. It's in the voice of the person you're addressing, except not - it has your own Brume accent, your own sharp bitterness. "I don't know if I _should_ be. I'm not entirely myself. I wouldn't be even if I never gave this - " You pause to gesture at the body, the skin you're wearing. " - back. Not that I'd keep it, mind. I'm not going to break our agreement."

Even if you did - well, then _you'd_ have to be the Warrior of Light, and you know what job you're not cut out for. You wouldn't think anyone _was_ cut out for it, if it weren't for the obvious.

"Then again, I am the result of you getting your hands on the potent memories of a dead man's soul crystal and having a complete mental breakdown over it, so maybe you aren't cut out for it either. It's not healthy, you know, to keep stuffing all your petty little thoughts into me, even if you know you're doing it now."

Eventually it will boil over again. First you, then Myste, the boy made of grief - 

"You're going to run out of names for us eventually, too. I haven't got any more I can lend you, I was already borrowing the other one."

Just that little touch of you, a name and the fact that the grieving child was a _child_. Always just enough, to prove that you have a little more substance than those shades he conjured up. You'd think, yourself, that you weren't real, except - 

You were the one who loved them, the one who jumped in recognition at Sid's voice out on a mountain path where a bunch of idiot knights got themselves killed. The one who still, still, burns at the thought of him, hot and bright. Doesn't that make you real?

The streets where the knights dumped your body don't hold the answers. 

"I suppose - and this is just between the two of us, mind - that I'm not going anywhere for the time being. Still, try to clean up your messes on your _own_ next time."

\----

You descend into the Brume, a shadow with the clink of mail. 

Rielle is outside the house, perched on the scaffolding with an empty mug. She clearly hears your approach, and looks away from the stars to the sound of your boots.

"Sid's still asleep," she says. Her hair is down, and she's still in her nightgown, so you imagine that she's not that far from bed herself. Perhaps she'll think this all a dream in the morning.

"Of course he is," you find yourself saying. "It takes a full flock of chocobos to wake him in the middle of the night. Little thing like you doesn't stand a chance."

Her eyes go wide. "Fray?" she asks, voice tiny, hesitant, like she's fresh from her mother's dungeon again.

You spread your arms wide. You cannot lie to her. "In the flesh," you say. "At least as much as that's possible at the moment."

Rielle makes a sound like a sob, pulling herself from the railing and the stars and throwing her arms around you. Awkwardly, you wrap your arms around her shoulders, and let her cry hot tears - steaming, in the chill of Ishgard's night - onto your breastplate.

"I missed you," she sniffles. "I missed you so much. When I saw you in Gyr Abania I thought - I thought - "

"Shh," you whisper into her hair. You really should have prepared better, to deal with her. A little girl who has already lost so much; of course she was going to cry. "It's okay, Rielle. I'm here."

"I didn't want to believe it," she says against your chest. "Sid told me about it, about the soul crystal, but I - I didn't want it to be real. I'm sorry."

"Why should you be sorry?" you say. "I don't want to believe it half the time myself, but here we are." You run your fingers through her sleep-unbound hair, the mail catching, but not hard enough to pull. She hiccups another sob.

"I wanted to ask Myste to bring you back," she says. "Even though I knew - even though I knew it wouldn't be real. I still wanted to see you. But I knew I had to be strong for Sid - "

 _You don't have to be strong for anyone_ , you want to tell her. She's just a kid. She shouldn't have to be strong for anyone except herself, even her pain in the ass guardians. "Really, Rielle," you say instead. "Sid's grown up, he doesn't need you to be his mother - "

"And then you were there," she says into your chest, ignoring your words. Fine, they will wait. "And the you were there, and if I'd just been a little stronger I could've reached out and touched you, and then - " A sob, her voice practically a wail. "And then you were _gone_ again - "

"I know," you say. "I know. I'm the one who should be sorry, Rielle."

She looks up at you, then - first with wide eyes, and then closing them, concentration furrowing her brow. "...I can't even remember your face," she says, quiet again. "I keep thinking I do, but it's really just your eyes, like right now. That's how I knew it was you under the helm. Your eyes are different, like they're burning."

"The flame in the abyss," you say, almost absently, and she nods before putting her face against your chest again and sighing. You hadn't even realized that your eyes were different. It's what you get for not looking in the mirror on your way out, you suppose.

"I like them," she says. Well, alright, that's good. "They match Sid's." Huh.

"I guess they do," you say.

"Should be the other way around though," she says, starting to sound sleepy. Poor thing. You can only imagine how much she wore herself out, crying all over you. "Sid's the one like a fire."

"He is," you agree, squeezing your arms around her slightly. Maybe your eyes, the absurdly poetic part of you observes, are the parts of you lost in each other, that have always drawn you down, down, down. "Our master thought that too. Come on, let's get you back to bed."

She lets you lead her, back into the house, past Sid's sprawl and sleeping snores. You'll go back out for her mug later.

"Fray?" she asks, as you're starting to tuck her in. "Is this - are you _really_ real?"

You pause, a blanket still held in your hand. "I don't know," you say. You won't lie to her. "But I think this is about as real as I'm going to get."

She considers that, then nods. "Okay," she says. "I can live with that."

"You're a good girl, Rielle," you say, folding the blankets around her. "And if - if you need to talk to me again, you know who to talk to. You need only ask."

It isn't part of your agreement. But you don't think you'll hear any complaints.

Rielle closes her eyes, smiling into her pillow. You only hesitate a moment, before pulling the helm from your head and pressing a kiss into her hair.

There's but one left. Be ready.

(You're not ready.)

\----

The fastest way to wake Sid isn't actually a flock of chocobos, and besides, there's no way you could get your hands on one of those at this time of night. Certainly, not without waking Rielle back up.

It's quite simple, actually. You sit next to him on the bed - you've taken the heavy plates of your armor off, but are still wearing the black leather underlayers. You took a moment to check Rielle's tip about your eyes, and she spoke true; they do more than reflect light, as Sid's do, but glow faintly in even the deepest darkness you can manage in the cramped bathroom. The flame in the abyss, indeed.

Sitting beside Sid, you let yourself drop - not only into the abyss, but straight into the flame itself. Your aether dances around you with emotion; your anger, your love, your desire. The well of aether you ride within now is much deeper than you had in life. It flows throughout the room, flickers like flames on the walls, like caresses over Sid's face.

Hardly the sharp jolt of an emergency call to battle, the way you both trained to wake to it, but you have no doubt it will do the job. Sure enough, his eyes flutter open, blue-green darting around the room, looking for a threat and finding only you. 

"About time you got up," you say, a trace of a smirk on borrowed lips. In the dark, his eyes reflect the light from yours. "I was worried you were going to sleep right through it."

You're kidding, of course. You know plenty of ways to wake him up.

He stares at you, and somehow that's harder to deal with than Rielle burying herself in your chest. "Is this some kind of trick?" he asks, disbelieving.

You can't blame him. At another time, you might feign hurt over it, tease him a bit, but... He has plenty of reason to disbelieve. "No tricks," you say, and then add, "And no Myste or fabled hero, either. Just me."

As much as you can be.

He stares for a moment, then sits up, pulling the yours-not-yours body to his. " _Fray_ ," he says, something in his voice breaking and you feel him drop. You couldn't not, because his angry grief washes over you, tinged with sparks of desire and love, a bright and brilliant thing in the dark.

"I'm sorry, Sid," you manage to squeeze out. "I should have come sooner."

"The hell does that matter?" he whispers into your hair, running his fingers through it, over your leathers. He's desperate for every inch of you, as he hasn't been since you were teenagers. "You're _here_."

Then he kisses you, hard, his eyes shut against the contradiction of the face you're wearing and the way you kiss him back. You let yourself sink a little further, into the abyss, into the mattress, into him.

With Rielle, you talked, and you would have kept talking until dawn, you had so much to say. You don't know why you expected anything similar from Sid. He's always been the sort who acted before thinking, sometimes to his peril.

The kiss is confident and easy on his part. It's strange and hesitant on yours, because this isn't really your body, not even entirely _you_ , and so you're the one to break the kiss and pull back.

Sid looks at you confused, his eyes hooded, his hands warm on your shoulders. "Fray?"

"I'm sorry," you say. "I don't know if - the arrangement I made for tonight didn't exactly cover that."

It's something of a cover, for your nerves, because the arrangement was really for _goodbye_ , and you can't imagine saying goodbye to him in any other way, but... Still, you hesitate.

Sid snorts. "Fray, I've already ridden that airship. I don't think it matters much who's piloting."

Ah. You suppose he has, at that. It helps your nerves, a little. 

(Just like old times, when neither of you really knew your own bodies well, but you knew each other's. Save, perhaps, on a somewhat grander scale.)

"Are you sure _you're_ not a trick?" you ask. "That was almost witty, and Sidurgu isn't witty."

He huffs, cuffing you in the shoulder. "Well, someone had to pick up the slack with you gone."

"I think Rielle's been doing rather well," you say cheerfully. "I do _watch_ sometimes, you know."

He blinks for a moment. "Right. That part's not going to stop being weird."

"You're okay with fucking me in someone else's body, but _that's_ what gives you the willies," you say, drawing your tone out flat to highlight the ludicrousness of what you just said. "I fear you may be beyond help, Sidurgu."

"It _all_ gives me the willies," he says, and he pulls you close again, starting to undo the ties of your leathers with practiced fingers. This time, you don't hesitate or pull away. "I try not to think too hard about what my life's become."

"A ghost story," you offer. "Maybe our friend here - " You pat yourself on the chest. " - can help us get set up in a proper haunted manor. Something with voidsent and rotting curtains."

He snorts. "You're _already_ a ghost story. I could swear I heard something about your rotting corpse marching itself all the way to Whitebrim on its own." 

A soft pull frees your shoulders from the meager warmth of the protective garments, leaving your skin exposed to the air. You shiver, almost enjoying the feeling of goosebumps for the first time in - how long? Since before you died, probably. He's not wrong that you kept walking a while longer, but there's a few automatic reflexes such dead bodies lack. You squirm closer, pressing yourself up against his warmth.

His scales are as smooth under your fingers as ever, except where there's a gap in them from a scar, otherwise almost invisible, from a deep cut you couldn't put back together. You bet you could, now, with how deep aether pools within this body.

Sid pulls you close, and keeps working your clothes off as he says, "Why didn't you come back? Back then. Rielle probably would've been terrified, but..." He wouldn't have cared. He doesn't have to say it, because you know he knows all about your rotten core, and what's a few maggots sprinkled on top?

"I don't know," you say. "I don't really remember much of it. I might have been technically ambulatory, but - I'm bound to the soulstone, Sid. I wasn't really at all myself unless it was there."

Or you were, back then. You're rather more intimately tied into this body, now, part and not a part. Sid runs a hand down your spine, reminding you.

Then, of course, because he's an arse, he fishes around in your pockets until he finds the soulstone in question and brings it to his lips, eyes lit up, teasing. Some part of you is convinced you feel it. "Maybe I should just swallow you up, then."

"You'll do better at that putting your mouth elsewhere," you tell him, taking the crystal from his hand and setting it aside with the last of your clothes. "My neck, for example, or a nipple, or perhaps - "

He opts for your mouth, ending the conversation. It works rather nicely. You let him pull you down on top of him, down into the abyss of him with red sparks of passion, and you drown.

\----

_There. Now are you satisfied?_

_For the future? You're not planning to do this again, are you? I'm not going to add myself to the legion of people begging favors of you, you fool. You've done enough. Let me go._

_...I see. So it isn't a one-sided arrangement after all. A chance to rest within the abyss, is it? Very well. In that case -_

_You need only ask, as always._

**Author's Note:**

> and with that, I am DONE... For now. For those wondering, the lyrics in the summaries are from [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btHd1zrjkqY) vocalized version of Flare (Flare, Saviour, Descend, and 3AM here) or Sara Bareilles' _Not Alone_ (all the rest). All the titles are Homestuck songs :v
> 
> If you want to hit me up (AU requests??? anyone???), hit me on tumblr @ starcrossed-sky or in game (Iris Hyakuya @ Midgardsomr). I thrive on people telling me how much emotional pain I've put them in :D


End file.
